Years ago, back when I was teaching high school and college students, one of my mentors told me that the teacher made the difference in the classroom. She told me that instructors had to own the success and failure of their students. I agreed, and now—after years of hiring and supervising staff and leading teams—I help executives and supervisors understand that they make the difference in their organizations. They make all the difference (for success and failure) with their teams and employees.
It is the responsibility of your supervisor—the person you call your boss—to set the stage for organizational and operational success and create an environment for you and your colleagues to do your best work. Supervisors are the difference between success and failure, between high morale and low, between engagement and apathy and between a thriving culture and a toxic one.
Every supervisor—the good and the bad—impacts organizational, operational, team and employee success, but the worst ones have a negative impact because they fail to prioritize their employees’ needs. However, if you work for a supervisor who consistently does these two things, you are being set up for success and will likely have a great work experience.
Your boss must define what success looks like.
Supervisors who don’t distinguish top performers may very well end up rewarding the poor performers, and this is a key factor in toxic organizations.
If your boss doesn’t define what success looks like, he is doing way more than undermining overall organizational success. He is indeed sabotaging your ability to succeed as a contributing member of the team and, quite possibly, setting you up to fail. Defining success is a key responsibility for effective supervisors, and when they can’t or won’t define it, you can bet your bottom dollar they aren’t going to work to help you achieve it either.
Why it’s critically important for effective supervisors to define success:
When success is defined, it can also be recognized and rewarded. But when it isn’t defined, you can put in all kinds of work and produce major deliverables and still not be adequately recognized or rewarded for your high performance.
When success is defined, employees understand how to become high performers. They become more engaged in goal accomplishment and better able to position themselves for a promotion and secure merit bonuses and raises.
When success is defined, it’s a sign that the organization likely has a transparent performance management program that it takes seriously, and it’s also a good sign that due diligence is taken to ensure employees understand the performance process and receive effective coaching throughout the entire year.
When success is defined, a culture of accountability—as opposed to a culture of toxicity—can be created because there is less chaos about roles and expectations, and there is less confusion about performance expectations.
When success is defined, it forces or prompts a review of the overall organizational or operational strategy to ensure alignment between performance expectations and strategy. Also, more attention gets paid to position descriptions to eliminate discrepancies that could lead to conflicts with goal achievement or create ambiguity among various roles.
If your boss doesn’t define what success looks like, he really can’t set proper standards for performance or accountability. As a result, everyone’s performance—the high and low performers—just ends up getting treated equally. Employee morale decreases, and over time, the culture could become toxic as well.
Your boss must provide resources and remove obstacles.
Supervisors who can’t be bothered to prioritize their employees’ needs should never expect their employees to prioritize the organization’s needs.
If your boss doesn’t provide the resources you need to effectively do your job, he is undermining your ability to succeed. And, if he doesn’t remove obstacles that impede performance, he hinders trust and makes it difficult for employees to thrive. Next to the need to define success, supervisors have an absolute responsibility to listen—and respond—to employee needs. It is the supervisor’s job to leverage his influence and leadership on behalf of employee success. If employees don’t have the resources they need to perform at high levels, the organization will suffer, and everyone will eventually feel it.
Why it’s critically important for effective supervisors to provide resources and remove obstacles.
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When resources are provided and obstacles are removed, employees have what they need to do their jobs well and deliver meaningful results. Also, workplace obstacles are minimized or eliminated. Obstacles such as conflicting policies that impede the customer experience get modified or removed. Obstacles such as broken communication flow, process redundancies, duplication of effort and procedural gaps get dealt with.
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When resources are provided and obstacles are removed, employees can focus on making themselves, their team members, their bosses and their organizations look good instead of fighting to be heard or spending unnecessary time complaining about what’s getting in their way.
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When resources are provided and obstacles are removed, employees feel heard, appreciated, respected and valued. As a result, they become truly engaged on what matters to their bosses. This leads to organizational leaders getting more input and deeper levels of investment from employees.
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When resources are provided and obstacles are removed, employees are free to use their talents to think, experiment, create and innovate in a way that will elevate operations and help to achieve strategic goals. Change management efforts and disruption issues have less of a negative impact on organizational performance and profits.
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When resources are provided and obstacles are removed, supervisors with a tendency to micromanage employees feel less of a need to do so. Instead, they can focus more on the big picture. They can become better leaders and better change agents because they realize they can actually get out of the way and allow their employees to confidently shine.
If your boss doesn’t take the time to understand what resources you need and which obstacles are in your way, he is not making you a priority. Surely, as a consequence, you might start to question whether you need to make him a priority either.
Key takeaways
For supervisors
If your goal is be an effective leader and create a high-performance culture of accountability and trust, it is critically important that you define success, provide resources, remove obstacles and then get out of the way and let employees do their best work.
You can give the best office and holiday parties, but fail to do these things, and it won’t really matter. You can provide your employees with the best work schedules, but fail to do these things, and it won’t really matter. You can pay employees great salaries, and still it won’t really matter if you neglect to prioritize these things.
For employees
If your supervisor won’t make defining success a priority, he is showing you that you aren’t a priority. If you work for a boss who doesn’t provide clear performance expectations and a definitive understanding for what success looks like, he is setting you up to fail. If your boss consistently neglects to ask about what resources you need to do your job or what obstacles may be in your way, you might want to run like hell before he sets you up to fail.
One of the worst things you can do is just stay on the job hoping that your work product meets with your supervisor’s goals. That hope will quickly turn to disappointment after you have given all you can only to receive poor performance reviews, get overlooked for raises and promotions or find yourself treated no better than any poor performer who does half the work as you do for twice the pay.